Des Moines Area Community College – 50 Years of Community
The legacy of Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) is one of dramatically
widening access to the life-improving and business-building power of education. Students from
all backgrounds find new career opportunities. In short, DMACC has brought democracy to
education in Central Iowa.
DMACC’s history is one of constant evolution to meet the changing needs of a very
diverse array of students and industries. Since its founding in 1966, DMACC has grown from a
metro-Des Moines-focused, vocational and technical learning center into to Iowa’s largest
community college, serving 11 counties and 75,000 credit and non-credit students annually on
six campus locations and five learning centers.
Iowa’s Largest and Most Diverse Community College
DMACC’s legacy is one of diversity, found in the students it serves, the career tracks it
offers, and in the demographics of the campus locations. As of 2014, DMACC offered 167
certificates, diploma and degree fields, by far the largest and broadest course offering of any
Iowa community college. Every DMACC course created, and the thousands of adjustments to
curriculum throughout its history were made in response to a community need. Each of the
college’s six campuses — Ankeny, Des Moines Urban, Boone, Carroll, Newton and West Des
Moines — also grew out of response to community needs.
Determined Founders
In 1966, public school boards in a nine-county area created the original Merged Area XI
Community College, which would change its name to Des Moines Area Community College
three-years later. Since its first day of existence, DMACC has benefited from high-energy
leaders committed to the vision and mission of the community college. The College’s first
superintendent (the equivalent of today’s president) in 1966 was Paul J. Lowery, former Director
of DeKalb Tech in Georgia, who set up shop with a skeleton staff at the old Ankeny post office.
Like its contemporaries in the community college movement during the mid-1960s, every
early accommodation was temporary. DMACC leased a former grocery store and a skating rink
in West Des Moines and converted the space into classrooms and labs for trade and industrial
programs. The first DMACC classes in the spring of 1967 attracted 28 students in four
vocational-technical areas: Industrial Electronics, Electrical Drafting, Medical Assistant and
Secretary/Clerical.
Not only did Lowery prove himself as a capable chief executive officer, he was a
visionary who established concepts and philosophies that are reflected in the College today. He
was also a tireless marketer, primarily using presentations to area chambers of commerce, school
boards, service clubs, and key business leaders to spread the word of the new college. These
discussions covered programs and services, and also started dialog with multiple constituencies
that would prove vital to the development of future DMACC education offerings and services,
while cementing the College’s tie with its communities.
Lowery’s dedication to the College was demonstrated through a year of 16-hour work
days spent recruiting staff, orienting a new board, providing leadership to program and
curriculum development, establishing relationships with the Iowa Department of Public
Instruction and legislative leaders and more. In large part due to the work of Lowery and his
early staff, the College grew rapidly in the 1960s. By 1969 DMACC had nearly 1,800 students
and began to grow outside the Des Moines metro area.
Growing Beyond Des Moines
The Boone Campus was originally Boone Junior College, founded in 1927 on the third
floor of the Boone High School with faculty who served both the junior college and the high
school. When legislation was approved to create the Iowa community college network, Marvin
Sturtz, County Superintendent of Boone County, served on the committee that created the
boundaries for Merged Area XI and helped ensure the agreement included language to designate
Boone Junior College as an attendance center.
The Boone community responded by passing a $925,000 referendum with 96 percent of
the vote in favor to build a new facility to address the limited space issue. In February 1969, the
Iowa Legislature passed enabling law that allowed DMACC to enter into a long-term
lease/purchase agreement with the Boone Community School District for the newly constructed
facility, and the way was cleared to develop Boone as DMACC’s second campus.
Today, Boone Campus includes on-campus housing and is home to all DMACC Bears
intercollegiate athletic programs. This campus provides a traditional, two-year liberal arts
residential college environment, while also offering a full slate of vocational-technical offerings.
Carroll Takes a Circuitous Path to Joining DMACC
DMACC’s farthest-west campus in Carroll joined the district in a unique way. Leaders in
Carroll and neighboring Audubon counties originally hoped Carroll would be the site of a standalone Western Iowa community college. When community colleges were centered in Sioux City,
Council Bluffs and Fort Dodge, surrounding Western Iowa counties joined those merged areas.
Carroll and Audubon counties found themselves on an island, unattached to any merged area.
In 1970, a committee from Carroll and Audubon counties began to look for a home,
meeting with the boards of Merged Areas XI (DMACC in Ankeny), XII (Western Iowa
Technical Community College in Sioux City) and XIII (Iowa Western Community College in
Council Bluffs). The difficulty in finding a fit came down to distance; Carroll is 90 miles from
the central campus of each merged area. The college boards were also concerned that Carroll and
Audubon Counties’ assessed valuations would not support building a Carroll Campus in the near
future.
Ultimately, DMACC invited Carroll and Audubon counties to join its merged area, after
agreement on the type of services and the timetable for establishing a campus. Indeed it was
several years before Carroll Campus received a permanent home, with classes meeting in various
temporary locations until 1986 when the first dedicated campus building was constructed. The
facilities expanded in 1992 and in 2003.
1970s: Ankeny and Urban Campuses Headline an Era of Physical Growth
With Boone onboard, and Carroll and Audubon counties completing the merged area,
DMACC began construction on its Ankeny Campus in 1970 on 240 acres purchased from Iowa
State University. The first structures hosted Industrial Manufacturing and Health Services, two
programs that have remained popular throughout the College’s history. The DMACC Board had
the vision to purchase 80 additional acres adjacent to the Ankeny Campus, bringing the total to
nearly 320 acres. As more buildings were constructed in the 1970s, DMACC continued to
consolidate offerings from temporary quarters elsewhere onto the Ankeny Campus.
With the Ankeny Campus under construction, the College again responded to the needs
of the community and looked toward urban Des Moines. The DMACC Urban Center was the
precursor of the Urban Campus, taking up temporary residence in the former Dowling High
School building, and then moving to the former Sabin Elementary School building in central Des
Moines. The location for the current Urban Campus was purchased in 1978 and opened with a
newly constructed facility in 1980.
Today Urban Campus is DMACC’s second-largest location, offering an array of
academic programs as well as the largest high school equivalence (HiSET) and English as a
Second Language (ESL) programs in Iowa. Urban Campus students come from Des Moines,
Central Iowa and more than 75 countries around the world. The Urban Campus also continues its
founding tradition of offering access to education and services to those who face extraordinary
barriers.
Breaking Down Financial Barriers
When DMACC leaders found that the relatively low cost was still out of reach for some students,
they created the DMACC Foundation widen access to education through the solicitation of
donations and awarding of scholarships. The Foundation started with a total budget of $43,000
for scholarships in its inaugural year of 1975. By 2014 the Foundation was granting more than
1,500 scholarships across all DMACC campuses funded by $725,000 in donor contributions
annually.
By 2016, the Foundation expects to provide $1 million in scholarships to more than 2,000
students.
The Foundation also uses charitable gifts to support professional development and capital
improvements for the students, faculty and staff of the College and the broader communities it
serves. Among the Foundation's goals are supporting student success, high academic
achievement, completion of degree programs, and involvement in civic life through
volunteerism.
1980s: Cementing Business Relationships, Moving into Liberal Arts
By the dawn of the 1980s, community colleges were on the cusp of turning 20 years old
and no longer a novelty. DMACC had four campuses — Ankeny, Boone, Carroll and Urban —
each serving a unique set of community needs, while simultaneously working together to support
DMACC’s mission of widening access to education for students and helping to power growth for
businesses. In 1981, Dr. Joseph Borgen became DMACC’s second president and put into words
DMACC’s future focus: “I’m going to spend my time and I want all of you to spend your energy
in living from here on into the future, because we have a lot of things to do and a lot of services
to provide to the people of this area.”
Since its founding, one of DMACC’s main functions has been to offer training to
employed workers, helping them advance within their companies. An evolution in that effort
came in the mid-1980s when the College’s effort became more proactive. The Economic
Development Group (EDG) was created in 1984 and provided training to more than 11,000
individuals in its first-year. The 1990s also featured deepening cooperation between DMACC
and area chambers of commerce and employers as DMACC’s customizable training and
continuing educational offerings were increasingly seen as valuable workforce improvement
tools. By 2014, the successor of the EDG, DMACC Business Resources (DBR) had brought
invaluable training to thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars of state
economic development benefits to dozens of companies across DMACC’s service area.
DMACC’s tradition of celebrating other cultures - originally started by the College’s
Culinary Arts program’s ethnic dinners in the 1975 - expanded in the 1980s with “Japan Week,”
the first of many formal weeks of study of different countries. Later, the College would dedicate
the entire school year to programming focused on a specific country. The College would go on to
have faculty exchanges with Japan and the Soviet Union and increasingly globalize its view of
business and education.
In the late 1980s DMACC experienced increasing demand for residential college liberal
arts education from Iowa’s largest community college. The college responded by ramping up oncampus amenities, including new on-campus housing at Ankeny, which attracted 200 students.
1990s: A New Era of College Cooperation
By 1990, DMACC was in the midst of a sea change. While technical, skill-focused
education opportunities remained an important part of the College’s offering, DMACC again
responded to the community by expanding liberal arts course offerings in a variety of settings
and delivery formats. In the 1990s, tuition and other costs at Iowa’s public four-year universities
were becoming increasingly cost-prohibitive for many Iowans. This resulted in a growing
number of parents and students looking to community colleges to make four-year degrees more
affordable. Many four-year colleges and universities increased the level of cooperation with
community colleges in the 1990s through the expansion of formalized transfer agreements. In
1994, the University of Northern Iowa was among the first four-year schools to create a “2+2”
agreement with DMACC, designed to allow students to spend their first-two years at DMACC
and then seamlessly transfer to UNI to finish their Bachelor’s degree.
Today DMACC has 87 such agreements with four-year colleges and universities in Iowa
and in several other states.
Newton Campus Rises from Maytag Partnership
Even as the liberal arts courses grew through DMACC, the college vocational and
technical offerings remained a mainstay. In fact, DMACC’s fifth campus was championed by a
coalition of the city’s dominant employer, Maytag Corporation, the City of Newton, Newton
Community Schools and Iowa State University, and later the University of Iowa, which located
an MBA program at the campus.
The genesis of the Newton Campus dates to November 1992 when the Maytag
Corporation CEO, Leonard Hadley, contacted DMACC President Joseph Borgen to explore
expansion of DMACC programs and services to Newton if a facility, land and funding were
donated. In 1993 Newton DMACC Polytechnic Campus was opened. The term polytechnic was
chosen to reflecting the intended focus on education, training, and cooperation with industry and
the community.
A Center for Policy Discussion
Located in Iowa’s capital city, DMACC has been a center for political and policy
discussion, hosting a list of high-profile policymakers including First Lady Hillary Clinton and
Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala for a nationally televised healthcare
conference in 1993. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown (April 1994) and U.S. Surgeon General
Dr. Joyce Elders (April 1996) also visited DMACC in the 1990s. Since then DMACC has
continued to host a long list of state and national policymakers.
2000s: Evolution of the Two-Year College Concept
At the turn of the century, DMACC was nearly 40 years old and had grown in every area
envisioned by the 1966 state legislation that established community colleges. The vocational and
technical training and “programs for in-service training and retaining of workers” sections of the
founding legislation were an early focus. However, by the year 2000, DMACC was showing
impressive growth in other purposes outlined in that founding legislation, including offering the
first two years of a four-year degree and courses offered to high school students, often at their
local high school.
In an era of high college graduate student debt, the trend of the 1990s accelerated in the
2000s as more and more students responded to DMACC’s combination of quality liberal arts
studies and affordable tuition. By 2014, 65 percent of DMACC’s 26,365 credit students
identified themselves as students studying liberal arts in preparation for transfer to four-year
schools. The growth in liberal arts and sciences students created demand on DMACC campuses
for more of the experiences and amenities normally found at four-year colleges; DMACC
responded with ambitious plans for student housing. DMACC formed a partnership with private
developers to build and operate apartment-style houses on and near the Ankeny Campus. In
Boone, the College purchased and remodeled on-campus student housing and built more units to
meet student demand.
While housing and activities were important, DMACC also focused resources on
development of its University-College Transfer Program, an initiative that aligned curriculum,
program, policy, technological and personnel changes designed to deliver even greater levels of
support for liberal arts students in creating and executing a plan for graduation and seamless
transfer to a four-year institution.
Adding West Des Moines
In foresight, DMACC purchased land in West Des Moines during the 1990s for what
would become the College’s sixth and final campus. In 2001, DMACC responded to the
growing need for skilled Information Technology (IT), digital networks, and telecommunication
workers by founding its newest campus in a facility specifically designed to aid in the training of
skilled workers in those areas. West Campus has become known for its “Celebrate Innovation”
week, which features a series of state and national speakers on innovative thinking and its critical
role in personal, organizational, community and national success.
Career Advantage and Learning Centers
The first decade of the 21st Century brought dramatic growth in the number and variety
of DMACC credit courses offered to students who were still in high school. The College’s effort,
DMACC Career Advantage, expanded from serving 480 students completing 3,571 credit hours
in 1999 to serving 11,496 students with 92,885 credit hours in 2012. In 2013, 13,308 students
enrolled in Career Advantage, an all-time record.
Some concurrent enrollment classes take place within the individual high schools, while
others are held at stand-alone regional attendance centers known as Career Academies. During
the first 15 years of the program, DMACC added three stand-alone Career Academies: the
Hunziker Center in Ames (2006), the Perry VanKirk Career Academy in Perry (2010), and the
Center for Career & Professional Development at Southridge in Des Moines (2013).
Driving the growth of DMACC’s Career Academies are both the opportunity for high
school students to get a jump on their careers, and millions in cost savings for both students and
school districts. “Technical programs have changed so much over the years, from what used to
be a shop class is now a completely different experience. With new technology and sophisticated
equipment, most school districts cannot afford vocational programs today.”
DMACC’s Career Academies are learning centers serving as outposts, offering both
credit and noncredit classes to students as a part of DMACC’s continuing role to bring education
to its communities.
DMACC expanded education and training opportunities for high-demand jobs by
constructing a $14 million Health Sciences Building on the Ankeny Campus, the first College
building jointly funded by a private-public partnership. DMACC has led the effort to connect
unemployed and under-employed Central Iowans with available jobs through its comprehensive
Workforce Training Academy, located adjacent to the Urban Campus. Thanks to a close
partnership with other service agencies, the Workforce Training Academy not only offers
training, but also assists individuals in overcoming various barriers that prevent them from
accessing the training.
A Strong Vote of Confidence
Perhaps the strongest endorsement of DMACC’s value to the community has come at the
ballot box. Iowa law requires voters to reapprove property tax levies that fund the community
colleges every 10 years. In the most recent referendum (2013), 75 percent of voters in 22 Central
Iowa counties approved continuing DMACC’s two equipment and facilities levies totaling 26.25
cents per $1,000 valuation payment through at least 2025.
Thanks to this strong community support, all of DMACC’s buildings have been funded
by levy proceeds without the use of bonds.
DMACC’s plans for investing the renewed levy revenue will benefit all six DMACC
campuses. Five campuses will receive expansions or completely new structures, and all six
campuses will see major renovations to create and equip more classroom and lab space. The
College also continues to explore public/private partnerships that benefit both the College and
the community.
2010 and Beyond
DMACC has responded to challenges of the 21st century by launching innovative and
comprehensive student retention programs and signing more articulation agreements, including
one with Grinnell College. DMACC has also ramped up courses in Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math (STEM) fields to meet growing demand while further developing preprofessional programs.
DMACC campuses continue to use their discretion to meet the needs of the region, or to
fill an unmet need statewide. Examples of this include the addition of a unique-in-Iowa two-year
Court Reporting degree, and the expansion of DMACC’s acclaimed Culinary Arts program on
the Newton Campus.
DMACC has stayed true to its heritage of helping all students who wish to succeed by
expanding programs to serve more Iowans in the areas of high school equivalency and English as
a Second Language, at-risk youth, the unemployed and the underemployed, while also building
on its innovative Honors Program. “To meet the needs of our vibrant community, DMACC is
growing too,” as indicated by Rob Denson, DMACC President since 2003. “College
administrators are working on a 10-year strategic planning initiative to build new facilities,
purchase new technology, remodel its campuses and work with businesses to offer new career
choices,”
Assuming the continuing twists and turns of the national economy, the future is difficult
to predict. Given current trends, DMACC leaders expect the coming decade to bring an
expanding role for online courses and even more accelerated rate of change in entry-level job
skill requirements, with an increasing percentage of the workforce requiring frequent updating of
their work skills including skills that will qualify them for other occupations. The pace of
technological change is also expected to require investment in data systems and software, as well
as construction of new facilities and remodeling.
As the current president of DMACC, Denson stands confidently on his mantra that
“DMACC graduates build our homes, fix our cars, care for us and protect us. Nearly all Central
Iowa companies rely on DMACC for a part of their skilled workforce. In fact, more than 95
percent of DMACC graduates live and work in Central Iowa. As those companies grow, we will
need more skilled workers. DMACC will deliver.”
Alumni quotes
“I am very proud to say I’m a DMACC graduate. I have built a lot of personal relationships with
students that I went through the program with, as well as instructors. It’s not just about going to
class and being a number, you get to go to class and interact with people who truly care about
what you are going to do in the future.”
- Amy Weiford, DMACC Ankeny Campus Respiratory Care Program graduate
“I met a lot of veterans coming out of the service who went to DMACC just like myself, and the
type of environment that they have at DMACC is very encouraging to veterans.”
- Clint Peterson, DMACC Ankeny Campus 1975 graduate, military veteran, retired Ames
Fire Dept. Chief and former DMACC Fire Science Advisory Board member
“I’ve employed several folks who have degrees from DMACC. I have a heightened awareness
when I see that, it says something to me.”
- Jim Langin, DMACC West Campus alum and Senior Vice President, Mutual of Omaha
Bank, Des Moines
“DMACC provided me with a hands-on learning experience for the real world that boosted my
self-confidence and will continue to pay back for my entire career. “
- Jerry Nystrom, 1984 DMACC Boone Campus graduate and Director of Marketing,
Farner-Bocken Company